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By way of IGN, the first official reveal has gone out for the Beast Wars reissue line that we first learned about through product listings on the Walmart app.

Due out this summer are reissues of Beast Wars Ultra class Optimus Primal and Megatron, along with Cheetor and Rattrap. All four toys are in their original forms, and notably the Ultras do not feature the remolding that was done for the 10th anniversary rereleases. All four toys have at least minor deco tweaks, with Primal and Megatron having the most evident, with small color changes to appear a little more accurate to the TV show.

These are not stated as being exclusive to Walmart, but they will be going up for preorder during Walmart's second Collector Con event on Monday, the 15th, which makes a good case for these being exclusives, in a continuation of Walmart's offerings of reissue and retro style Transformers products.

That being the case, of course, means there's no reason to believe at all that Walmart will begin fulfillment or in-store stocking of these toys on the promised August 1st sale date, since they've proven notoriously bad about following through on that. However, the Netflix line, the retro Headmasters, and all of the G1 reissues past the first wave have proven that one way or the other, it's eventually easy enough to find all these things on store shelves, so if these are for you, it shouldn't be hard to get hold of them.

Whether they'll be for you at their modern day price points might be another matter, though. IGN reports that Primal and Megatron will come in at $40 each, Cheetor will be priced as a modern Deluxe at $20, and... so will Rattrap. The Basic price point was always the most challenged when it came to coping with rising costs, so it's actually not hard to imagine Rattrap now costs nearly as much as Cheetor to make. But that still may be a hard sell in the store when the moment comes and it and the visibly larger Cheetor are hanging side by side.

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Two notable official reveals happened today in Transformers. The one we knew to expect was Rodimus Prime, which was shown and listed for preorder by TakaraTomy, while what we expected to be a coordinated reveal by Hasbro never happened.

Rodimus Prime is Commander class, features a large trailer battle platform, and has a small pile of blast effects... which are at least partly recycled from Sky Lynx, based on one of the stock photos. It's due out in August in Japan, which probably means we'll see it in the US a little earlier this summer as has been the case with the prior two Commanders.

What Hasbro revealed today was Selects G2 Ramjet, the redeco most people have been expecting since we knew for sure the Earthrise coneheads were going to exist. That's due out later this summer, with most retailers putting it at August, soon after Transmutate. But Selects can be tricky, and it may well turn out that Ramjet will turn up first even though it was solicited later!

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This week: Commander Class Rodimus looks pretty good, but we can wait. It's not like we don't already have too many toys to play with.

News

RFC News Desk 132 – Latest Leaks Shows Us Commander Class Rodimus Prime

Masterpiece Skids Prototype First Look

A leaked Japanese preorder solicitation image this morning gave us the first look at Transformers Kingdom's Commander Class toy: Rodimus Prime! This low res image is incomplete, as it notably fails to depict the trailer battlestation that's been reported by the inside-info crowd as being part of the toy like the G1 version. But it does have an obscure extra accessory taken from the pages of IDW's ReGeneration One comic series: The Sword of Primus.

Rodimus is a new, unique mold, though it looks like some broad strokes of engineering might be copied from Studio Series Hot Rod. The robot forms a full vehicle on its own without the trailer unit, as seen occasionally in the G1 cartoon. It's also been said that the Rodimus robot is about the height of Earthrise Optimus Prime, giving a good sense of the mass of this toy. How well the trailer and any other accessories might fill out the rest of the $80 price point remains to be seen.

But it might not remain so for long. There's indications that a proper reveal for this is coming very soon, and it's not a huge leap to believe it might be just part of a bigger product debut event, which would take up for the absent Toy Fair presentation this year. That might be in the form of a Transformers Tuesday event as early as next week! Hopefully Hasbro will begin advertising that for us shortly if so!

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The news didn't want to work with us this week, but we made it happen. We're here for you.

Mentioned on the show

Masterpiece Skids Prototype First Look

Walmart Reissuing Vintage Beast Wars Toys With Modern Sticker Shock

* and more!

This week: Toy Fair didn't happen, the free Pulse Premium access early adopters scored is going away, but at least Don has some good news!

The News

* RFC News Desk 131 – Hasbro Pulse Premium Free Trial Periods Coming To An End

After two years, you'll have to pay up.

When Hasbro Pulse launched in 2019, customers making qualifying purchases during the opening weekend were automatically enrolled in Pulse Premium at no extra charge. Besides free shipping, nobody knew what that actually meant.

Two years later, we still barely know what Pulse Premium is about other than free shipping, but as revealing in an email to people still holding those free Premium memberships, if you want to continue that benefit and see if any others develop, you'll now have to pay like everybody who came in late.

After March 1st, Pulse Premium can be renewed at the regular price (so far that's been $50 per year), but whether that's worth it for what Pulse has been able to offer so far is a question everyone will have to answer for themselves - and the prevailing answer so far on social media has been an unsurprising "no."

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This week: Yeah, there's news. But everyone wants to talk about Unicron's mouth. Actually, "Unicron's mouth" would've been a good show title.

Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Basketball. Yay!

The News

RFC News Desk 129 – Finally, a Basketball

RFC News Desk 130 – Generations Selects Deep Cover Officially Exists Now! …Twice?

OR: Deep Cover - Uncovered

A few quick and attentive fans including myself already own Generations Selects Deep Cover, but Hasbro officially revealed it today and opened up preorders across the fan channel retail spectrum. But then they also made oblique reference to a second Deep Cover that would also be happening. What the heck? Listen to News Desk 130 to find out some of the whats and maybe-whys!

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